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With rigorous economic research and practical policy solutions, we focus on the issues and institutions that are critical to global development. Explore our core themes and topics to learn more about our work.

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Commentary & Analysis

In timely and incisive analysis, our experts parse the latest development news and devise practical solutions to new and emerging challenges. Our events convene the top thinkers and doers in global development.

Three years ago, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) launched the DREAMS partnership, an ambitious and innovative effort to reduce HIV infection rates among adolescent girls and young women in ten sub-Saharan Africa countries, followed by support for DREAMS activities in five additional countries last year. This large-scale collaboration between PEPFAR, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Girl Effect, Johnson & Johnson, Gilead Sciences, and ViiV Healthcare aims to empower girls and women through rigorous, evidence-based methods that both improve healthcare services and address structural factors that contribute to HIV risk.

Center for Global Development and the Population Council are hosting a deep-dive discussion on lessons learned from DREAMS program operations on the ground and emerging results of research into this work, with a focus on implementation science and impact evaluation. Two expert panels will draw out the preliminary implications for future policy and programming around HIV and adolescent girls and young women.

Evidence from US-based firms like Google, Facebook, and Amazon shows that market concentration and the failure of competition policy has had grim effects on productivity and inequality. Indeed, across a handful of industries, only a couple of massive firms control the majority of decisions Americans make as consumers. But what effects does market consolidation have on the rest of the world?

AidEx is a two day event, which encompasses a conference, exhibition, meeting areas, awards and workshops. Its fundamental aim is to engage the sector at every level and provide a forum for aid & development professionals to meet, source, supply and learn. AidEx was created to help the international aid and development community engage the private sector in a neutral setting, drive innovation and support the ever-growing need for emergency aid and development programmes.

Over 1 billion women lack access to financial services due to economic and social barriers, time and mobility constraints, and discrimination Financial services delivered digitally can address these barriers. Closing the global gender gap in access to finance provides an opportunity for the private sector to reach an untapped and profitable market, and provides governments with an opportunity to better reach their constituents. This event looks at the recent evidence on which emerging technologies empower women economically, as well as the importance of cross-sectoral partnership and women’s entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Center for Global Development, TechnoServe, and the World Bank are pleased to co-host this event in Dar es Salaam. We are committed to finding what works to promote women’s financial inclusion and are conducting innovative research on the potential of digital technologies. This event will launch new research on this topic and bring together leaders in the government and the private sector with experts in finance, development, and technology to have critical conversations on closing the financial gender gap. We hope you can join us.

With the goal of driving down drug costs, governments across the globe have instituted various forms of pharmaceutical price control policies. Understanding the impacts of such policies is particularly important in low- and middle-income countries, where lack of insurance coverage means that prices can serve as a barrier to access for patients and lack of effective quality control may allow for low-quality medicines in the market. In her paper, Emma Boswell Dean examines the theoretical effects of price controls in such markets and then measures the empirical effects of one implementation of pharmaceutical price controls, in which the Indian government placed price ceilings on a set of essential medicines.

This unique conference is designed to convene both the new industrial policy thinkers, who have studied the history of government intervention, and blended finance practitioners, who are involved in setting up the institutions and procedures that will use official development finance to subsidise private enterprise in developing countries. These two communities too often work in isolation and have much to learn from each other.

The conference will combine scholar presentations with high-level policy discussions. Please see the preliminary programme for a list of sessions and speakers, in addition to more details about the conference.

Please join us for this “first of its kind” conference and feel free to share this invitation with your network and encourage your colleagues to attend. We want to reach as many people who work in private sector development as possible.